“The Hatless Update”

Oh, you thought I meant this Hatless Update? Haha, no, that is so 2011. I’m talking about the November 21, 2013 update, known as the Two Cities Update, though I believe the main feature of this update is the fact that it contains no new hats. If I’m not wrong, this is the only content update this year to not add any hats to the game. Isn’t that interesting?

In all seriousness, I’m loving this update. It added so many new amazing things, adding a whole new role for the Medic in MvM, two new maps and added our much-loved Snakewater to the game officially, along with making the Amputator and Crusader’s Crossbow viable again (Aabicus is over there in the corner, crying with joy.) We also saw the Liberty Launcher gain a small but nice buff, which made the Airborne Armaments an actual, synergistic set. The Baby Face’s Blaster was also buffed to become a terrifying rival to the Scattergun. Yet, no nerfs. Sad, but we need to focus on the good things, and my blog will be on MvM.

mvm_mannhattan and mvm_rottenburg were added in this update. I haven’t played mannhattan yet, but rottenburg is about as big as mannworks but seems just as big as bigrock, with an opening area with a similar feel to bigrock’s opening area, a chokepoint which the bots must traverse and a bunch of winding paths. We see this map in “The Sound of Medicine” short, which is NOT the 15 minute SFM video we’ve been hearing about. Sorry. In this video, we see the Medic using his new, amazing features – firstly the revive system.

Revival – when a teammate dies in MvM, they will drop a revive marker which displays a hologram of the dead teammate’s class. This marker will call out to you while it lasts, which is until the teammate respawns, and if a Medic heals it, it will fill up – when it fills, the teammate is respawned nearby. It takes a while orginally, but if you get one of the new upgrades for mediguns…

There’s four new upgrades for the medigun – Healing Mastery, Overheal Expert, Canteen Specialist, and Projectile Shield. Healing Mastery is a four-level upgrade replacing a previous heal rate upgrade. It increases your patient-heal rate, revive rate (letting you revive teammates more quickly, almost instant at the final level), and self-heal rate. Overheal Expert combines the two overheal upgrades, max overheal and overheal duration. Canteen Specialist is like Share Canteens, but it has three levels, and each one increases the duration of canteen effects by ‘1’, and reduces the cost of canteens by 10 credits per level, for a minimum of 5 credits.

Projectile Shield is the secondary focus of “The Sound of Medicine” short, after revival. It adds a bar next to your Uber bar, and builds energy by healing teammates – it can fill extremely quickly under the right circumstances. It’s activated by pressing Special-Attack, and projects a shield in front of you, stopping all damage which impacts it. It lasts until the charge bar drains, which is actually a pretty long time. It allows you to continue healing – and even Ubering – allies while you defend them from all damage. It adds a huge utility focus for the Medic, making him an amazing team player in MvM.

And finally, golden weapons, for all those loadouts that look good with a bright yellow gun! Picture by Gen. DeGroot.